CHESS#1239

The Women’s World Championship (WWC) in Tehran is into round three and the round of 16. Dronavalli Harika and Padmini Rout remain in the fray after coming through two tiebreaks each. Unfortunately, the Indians are paired to meet in the quarter-finals if they reach that far. 

Harika deliberately opted for a tiebreak with two short draws in round two, versus world junior champion, Dinara Saduakassova. Padmini had to fight hard in the first round when she got a lucky break against Elina Danielan who messed from up a winning position. She was worse against Zhao Xue in the round two tiebreaks before the Chinese WGM blundered. 

Speaking of pairings, Hou Yifan’s set at the Gibraltar Open was run through computer programs, which indicated it arose normally. So the world champion may have jumped the gun when accusing the organisers of manipulating her pairings to make her face seven women in the first nine rounds. 

Another exciting event is the Prochess. Teams from 48 cities are playing rapid matches online, every Wednesday at 2200 IST, at www.chess.com. Four-member teams are initially shuffled into four groups. The top 24 teams will qualify for the next stage. The final four teams will play off on March 25-26. Magnus Carlsen, Wesley So, Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura are all playing. 

Delhi Dynamite leads the “Eastern Division” group that also contains Mumbai Movers, Amravati Jodhas, Odisha Express, and Norway Gnomes (with Carlsen). This format has a delicious randomness. Carlsen won a hard fight against the 12-year-old Nihal Sarin, and dropped into a Kt fork against Abhijeet Gupta who counter-blundered by missing it. Tune in for good chess, with funny expert video-commentary. 

The Grand Prix schedule has been released. Sharjah, UAE: February 18-27; Moscow, Russia: May 12-21; Geneva, Switzerland: July 6-15; Palma De Mallorca, Spain: November 16-25. Each event will have a prize fund of $137,000, and 24 qualified or nominated players will contest.  

The top two from the GP cycle will be seeded at the (eight-person) Candidates. Agon also announced a new global sponsor, cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky Lab. People missing from the list at the GP include So and Caruana, who are both more or less guaranteed spots in the Candidates. Former World champions, Viswanthan Anand and Veselin Topalov, are also missing out. 

In the Diagram White to play (White: Xue Zhao Vs Black: Padmini Rout, WWC, Tehran 2017, Tiebreak G1), white has a stable advantage with a well-posted Kt, and rooks poised to hit the K-side. But she played 36. Nc4? Rd8 37. Qc7 Rd7 . [The problem is 37.Qf4 Ng6] . 

White tried to complicate with 38. Nd6 Qe7 39. Qxd7 Qxd7 40. Nxb5 cxb5. But the piece ahead is too much and it was (0-1) in 65 moves.   

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player